The Press Box - Listener Mail on Rumsfeld Obits, Oral Histories, and Pro Wrestling Analogies

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker dive into a new batch of Listener Mail. They break down the history of harsh obituaries (8:40), Mitt Romney’s latest Trump wrestling analogy (13:20), how to correctly write an oral history (21:40), and much more. Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Lani Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Bikari Sellers podcast tackles the most pressing current events through conversations and interviews with high-profile guests. Building upon his experience in South Carolina government and politics and his experience as a lawyer, Sellers will talk to his guests about all topics from the world of politics. Check out the Bacari Sellers podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, what's on your mind today? I was home alone last night. And obviously, probably no surprise to you. I turned on no sudden moves.

The new Soderberg movie that's on HBO Max. The Soderberg Heist movie is a great way to spend an evening. It was fantastic. You know, everybody, all the excitement I heard about it was completely borne out. I would have liked it probably if it was half as good because it's my sort of thing. But here's what's crazy about it. Well, here, let me back up. I was reading this piece by Josh Rottenberg in the LA Times.

And the writer, Ed Solomon, says this. He says, we resisted the temptation to do these movie writing, where everything is set up and over-explained, that means people have to pay closer attention to the story. For people who are used to texting while playing a video game while watching a movie, or playing a video game and watching a movie, this ain't going to work for this one. I like that. I like that hooked.

Like, you got to pay attention. You can't text the whole thing. But as I'm watching it, I find myself not texting. I find myself like Wikipediaing everything that's happening in the movie, right? Because they don't over-explain the whole way through. you have to, you find yourself learning so much like crack the code of the story. Like it's a like it's, you know, first season of true detective or something that you're just like actually reading historical facts online. Right. So it's like it's not it's not the texting that distracts you. It's the Googling.

And kind of that's the implicit point in what the writer is talking about. Right. They want us to, to Google. Maybe now we're watching the movie. They want us to, they want to teach us this history, right? I mean, and if you watch the movie, you're like indirectly are learning about the Detroit smog conspiracy, you know, like catalytic converters and all that stuff. It's more interesting than maybe it sounds like redlining, though, in Detroit and the sham of urban renewal. There's all this great like historical context. And so this is what this gets me thinking. Like movies that try to teach us history are just boring, right? I mean, they're always boring.

But movies that like allude to history and send us running to Wikipedia are awesome. right? Like that's like what we live for now. So here's my question. Could we construct a timeline? Could we construct a history of America through good slash fun movies that aren't specifically about the historical incidents?

You know what I'm saying? Like you can be like, okay, like JFK is on the list because that's just, that's a crime thriller like that might, that exists outside any kind of rules. But like, can we do like three kings for the Gulf War instead of something like more dry? Like, or like red, can we do red dawn for the Cold War? Is that maybe that's too silly.

But so maybe you say like, I don't know, can you do like the Tinker Taylor Soldier Spies the world? You're like good, like exciting movies that like don't give you everything, but give you enough to make you, they're good enough that make you send you running down a rabbit hole, right? I mean, maybe like full metal jacket gets a pass. Or do you do like first blood for Vietnam, right? That's what like gets you going down that rabbit hole. And like the 25th hour is September 11th. And, you know, I mean, there's so many good options here, right?

I mean, there's like there's so many cool things that even if they're completely wacky, like Django Unchained, like that makes you want to learn about all the just embellishments that Tarantino is making, right? So like, do you think that we can, can we do this? Can you make like the complete, like a total history of America through, through just actually good movies plus Wikipedia? Well, you've proposed a very right-wing version of the Cold War in the 80s with First Blood and the invasion of America and Red Dawn.

Yes, I feel that is a fantastic way to get people to actually engage with the subject. I mean, as Watchmen on the list to cite another reason of one, if we want to do Soderberg, traffic, you know, for the drug war and Aaron Brockovich. Yeah, what is the thing that I kept trying to figure out is what is the, what is like the tech explosion movie? Like that's like what, like, I mean, we don't want to watch jobs, right? I mean, it's like there's got to be some movie that kind of gets you in Silicon Valley, but. Who jobs is? Maybe that's the one.

Maybe that's the one. Maybe it's because it's a biography you sort of skirt the rules on there too. I mean, obviously the other option is just to, you know, give Soderberg a bunch of money and have him just direct the entire history of America through a series of caper movies, right? Like, it's just like a heist. Like August Wilson used to do with plays. A heist in every important moment in American history. And that's how, forget all this critical race theory controversy,

that ridiculous, like the ridiculous drummed up controversy. But maybe we can all agree that we should just learn the history of America through Soderberg Heist movies. I feel like that's the common ground we can get to. It would work with this moment because I feel whenever I hear, a produced podcast, it can always be boiled down to a thing that happened. Like there's something that happened and it was either a murder or it was a little piece of history. Also, by the way, every other substack newsletter is a thing that happened.

A thing that's not even particularly newsy right now, but it happened and I'm going to tell you it happened and you don't know it happened. And a lot of quality TV slash movies follow that pattern. Here's this thing that happened. and I'm going to make a story set there so that you're going to be really hopefully compelled by the story, but also then be, as you said, on your second screen, rushing to Wikipedia to find out what actually was involved in the true event. So yeah, I mean, but you're proposing these,

like we're selling these school boards across the country. That's the Soderberg model, right? Maybe we can somehow, you know, get the government to cough up like $100 billion to make, like, for Soderberg to spend the rest of his lifetime, you know, doing basically just like heist reenactments of American. It's like instead of drunk history, it's heist history, you know? Or it's, it could be, this could be a huge industry.

But it doesn't need to be a school board situation just to assemble the list of like awesome and fun movies that sort of, that sort of, you know, sketch out the arc of American history. Yeah, I don't know that school boards and great cinema often go together throughout the year. So yeah, I think we may need to do this. independently and then we'll sell it to the cool school boards around the country. The hip edgy school boards.

You aren't afraid of a little heist movie that may or may not star like Brad Pitt and George Clooney and Matt Damon and Elliot Gould and everybody else. That's the other thing, right? To make these really work with the kids, it has to be completely overcast. Like every role goes to a star, William H. Basie. Here we go, right? No, no, no part is too small. for a giant star. Coming up on today's show, David,

we answer your listener mail about everything from harsh obituaries of Donald Rumsfeld to the politics and wrestling analogy to the overuse of the oral history. All that more on the press box, a part of the ringer. Podcast Network.

Happy holiday weekend media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here along with Lonnie Rinaldo. David, do you have big plans for Fourth of July? I mean, we don't have big plans. I'm going to get canceled. We don't have big plans to celebrate the 4th of July, but we accidentally have big plans on the 4th of July.

We are like, we're driving to Vermont, back to Vermont. I guess I was in Vermont for an episode of this podcast. We were driving Vermont. My 12-year-olds going on like a, you know, a week-long day camp with this cousin

where they're just like jumping off bridges and going on mountain bike rides and stuff. So that's exciting. And we're just going to go, you know, hang out in Vermont. That sounds good. Right. We're driving and arriving on the 4th of July.

And so I presume there will be some hamburgers or hot dogs waiting for us, but who knows? And then the whole family's going to watch Red Dawn. That sounds like a lot of fun. Well, we got to learn about American history. Let us start, David, speaking of American history, with Donald Rumsfeld. He was the Secretary of Defense twice. He was an architect of the Iraq War. He died Tuesday.

He was 88 years old. George Packer wrote an obituary in the Atlantic, and I will quote a few sentences here for you. Rumsfeld was the worst Secretary of Defense in American history. Being newly dead shouldn't spare him this distinction. D dot, dot, dot. Wherever the United States government contemplated a wrong turn, Rumsfeld was there first with his hard smile, squinting, mocking the cautious, shoving his country deeper into a hole. His fatal judgment was equaled only by his absolute self-assurance. He lacked the courage to doubt himself. He lacked the wisdom to change his mind. Luke Simmons asked in the spirit of Packers piece on Rumsfeld and Hunter S. Thompson's

Richard Nixon, Obit, who are the other masters of the good riddins, you old son of a bitch genre, subgenre of writing? Oh my God, that's a great question. That's, I mean, we should, is there a great, is there a good riddance, you son of a bitch, Hall of Fame? Yeah, I mean, I just remember, I had to look this up. 2004, Walter Annenberg died, who was the press baron and philanthropist. And my old boss, Jack Schaefer, wrote an obit and slate for him that had the subhead so long you rotten bastard. So that was quite the send-off. I think like 20 years ago, when you and I were young pups in this business, there was this

idea that American obits were always very, you know, way too even-handed, even when a historic villain had died. And then you had to go to the British obituaries to get the real story. Remember, people would always say, ah, the British obiturates. They don't pull a punch. At some point in the last 10 years, I think just because the way the media evolved away from newspapers and other respectful organs and toward more disrespectful organs, and I say that in a good way, now all obits are like this. It would be odd to read the even-handed obituary of Donald Rumsfeld. It would be, I feel, either something like what George Packer wrote or it would be something perhaps in.

in a conservative publication that was saying, you know, hey, in defense of Donald Rumsfeld. Yeah, you have to have like an angle for everything, right? I mean, it would be, it would be, I mean, there's a certain amount of of reverence that's still sort of inherent in the form, but you're right. I mean, it's, it's, it would be hard to imagine, I'm just like trying to think of like giant figures. It would be hard to imagine like a Prince Charles obituary or even a Queen Elizabeth obituary that wasn't like totally angled.

Right. I mean, no matter even if it's the UK or the U.S. Every presidency now, I mean, every ex-president is more political or more politicized than when they were in office, you know? And I think particularly for the Rumsfeld, it's not really the Rumsfeld generation, but they agree to which all of the players and the George W. Bush White House were sort of like characters on our TV screen every night. It's really like all the obfews. Obituary, there's going to be a lot of confirmation bias in just obituary headlines too, right?

I mean, you just kind of like read what you want to read about these people who you feel like you already know so much about regardless of whether or not you do. Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. And it feels like maybe the Iraq War, you know, when the blogosphere, especially the lefty blogosphere is really coming to life. That's, that to me feels like the moment probably when the when the honest obit triumphs over the even-handed obit in America. American life.

Like that was kind of the, and I think if we look back, there's a lot of, there's a lot of reasons the mainstream media kind of, and especially mainstream media tone loses its hold on us, the decline of newspapers, the world was changing anyway. But the way the Bush presidency and particularly the Iraq War ignites the blogs. I mean, that feels like everything started to sound like a political magazine. Everything started to sound like an alt-weekly. and again, I just, I almost, you can almost draw that line in the sand, no pun intended, and be like, you know, this is where the idea that, you know, again, even handed, even keeled Donald Rumsfeld, OBits are going to be outnumbered by other Donald Rumsfeld obits. That's funny to think about in retrospect.

David, you came across a Mitt Romney soundbite from Jake Tapper's show over there on CNN, State of the Union. You want to tell us about that? I think this is on Sunday. Romney was out there just trying to sort of counter Trump and the Trumpites, and they're continuing kind of relevance. I think his argument was that they're sort of not as relevant as the media may make them same. And the way that history, you know, they're not maybe rewriting history about the insurrection so much as they're just sort of doing a thing. Let's just play the tape. But I also think, frankly, Jake, that here in the U.S., there's a growing recognition that this is a bit like WWF, that it's entertaining, but it's not real.

And I know people want to say, yeah, they believe in the big lie in some cases. But I think people recognize that it's a lot of show and bombast. But it's going nowhere. The election is over. It was fair. Now, I don't know. God, setting aside, I feel like I could say setting aside and then like 20 different things after this. But, okay, that's setting aside the fact that like, no, this isn't just play acting for lots of people.

And he sort of really just brushes over the, or glosses over the potential for another insurrection or whatever. ever untold other horrors for our country by being like nobody really believes this. But, but I don't know. I mean, we've said like 20 times over the past four years that we want to just like call an official end to the pro wrestling comparisons of the Donald Trump presidency. I mean, we were tired of it in the campaign. But I mean, maybe this, maybe it's not that Donald Trump is the pro wrestling president. Maybe it's just like the rest of us are the, are just, we're just stuck in pro wrestling

metaphors. Is the entire world, is it that the entire world is so affected by professional wrestling that we don't have any other context for making any point at all? I mean, it's so, it's, it may, Trump, the fact that Trump was out of WrestleMania and hosted a couple of them, maybe that maybe that's what's clouding us from the fact that like, we're the, we're the marks, you know, like, this is the whole K-fabe is our construction, not his. Yeah, I totally agree. And it's funny. And not only am I tired. to this analogy when it comes to Donald Trump, but isn't everything professional wrestling now? Yeah.

Isn't Twitter professional wrestling when you get on there? Are people just, you know, making absolutely unfiltered honest statements on Twitter, or are they, you know, working up the crowd and then sort of cupping their hand around their ear like Hulk Hogan? I mean, I think the latter is the answer. And so it's funny to me, it's like, I think we're just in this world. where just about everything is pro wrestling. And if something weren't pro wrestling, that's when I would want the analogy pointed out.

Exactly. Yeah, that's a really good point. When I wrote my book forever ago and I was doing the media rounds, I had to just like constantly, I mean, it was such a novelty for me to go on like straight media outlets and explain how influential professional wrestling was, right? I mean, to say like, the point that you're making,

everything was not professional wrestling then, but some important things were. I could say, you know, can we all agree that like keeping up with the Kardashians is professional wrestling? I think so. It's like can we all agree that MSNBC is professional wrestling? Like yeah, okay, we're getting there. It's like, okay, now can we agree that like, you know, all these aspects of American

pop culture is like televangelism professional wrestling? Yes, you know. But now, but you're right. Now we've gotten to the fact we're like, we've gotten to the point where even if nobody's it still feels a little bit too like dee classé or whatever to say that everything think real life is pro wrestling, but like a lot of people will say that like real life is like a reality show, right? And isn't that what a reality, isn't that what a reality show has come to mean? Just like the sort of like, it's not that it's real life on camera. It's that it's real, it's that it's

the performance of real life, you know, the inauthentic performance of real life on camera, right? And that's sort of what pro wrestling's been the whole time. You'll remember that politics is a reality show was the first worn out think piece in American life. like 10 years ago and then politics as pro wrestling became the second worn out think piece right after that. So they followed neatly after one another. Yeah. And it's interesting the way Romney uses the analogy because the whole premise of January 6th was that Donald Trump and a lot of Republican politicians were pretending that he won the election. They were pretending. But then this funny thing happened or not funny, which is people believed.

them and storm the capital and tried to stop Joe Biden from becoming president. So, you know, when we think of pro wrestling, I think of something like there is this harmless, you know, mostly harmless performance. And then everybody claps or cheers and everybody goes home and eventually when your kids are old enough, you tell them that's not real, right? These are, these people aren't really mad at each other, not really hitting each other. They're just playing around. This was real.

So this actually seems like exactly. the wrong analogy because if you keep insisting that Donald Trump actually won the election, he's going to become president in September, whatever the My Pillow guy thinks, that something else really, really bad could happen. Yeah. It's true. And, you know, the history of professional wrestling can tell us that, like, reality is not, like, a clear cut line, right?

Because, like, you know, again, when I was, my book, you can see elsewhere from reading my book, but there's, you know, there's evidence that the people in the crowds of pro wrestling events knew that pro wrestling was fake, like, all the way back to like the late 1800s, I think, now. I mean, I like, you know, in my book, I sourced it to the early 20th century, but there's just so much evidence of this, right? And yet, you know, I mean, a lot of people think that fans were being tricked until, like, the 80s, and that's obviously not true. I mean, people just aren't that stupid.

But even if fans were like, you know, openly aware that this is that this was a put on to some degree, there were still some people in the audience that got mad enough to like put out cigarettes on wrestlers as they were walking down the aisle, right? I mean, there are people that like, probably people that if you ask them would say, yes, I know this is a show, still got angry enough, riled up enough by the sort of like, you know, just the very like base instincts that wrestling plays to to make you like want to actually like take a swing at a wrestler or throw your, you know, stab them with your hairpin or whatever, all the stories are throw a beer bottle at them or something.

I mean, there's, it's not, it's either real or it's fake. It's a, even if it's fake, it can play on us as if it's real. And I think that's an important point to make.

To your point about your book, another funny thing has happened, which is that the children of the 80s professional wrestling generation have grown up to be the pundits of today. Yeah. So this has just become a go-to analogy because it's, like, you know, name random rock song or Animal House was to a previous generation of journalists.

Mm-hmm. And that's constantly where their mind goes. And like it was, you know, when you were a professional wrestling writer, that was still like, oh, what is this? This is interesting. Somebody's, this is different, right? The comment section of the first few pieces I wrote, and this was on deadspin.com. It's not exactly like I was writing in the New York Times or some, you know, played Hallowed

Hall. The comment section of the first few pieces I wrote was, what is this do? here. Like, why are you writing this? On Dexpin. Yeah. They wanted to, they wanted to uphold the standards of the place. Yeah. Yeah. But it's now, it's such a go-to analogy. I see people on Twitter all the time. This is like when Hulk Hogan joined the NWO. And it's almost become like the Harry Potter analogy where people are saying, you know, hey, it's time to read another book. You know, if you're constantly comparing things to like Slytherin and Hufflepuff, you need to, it's time to move on and find another analogy. Time to find, time to move on, folks.

And just, again, find it, mix in the pro wrestling analogies. David and I are both very much for that. But we just, we just need to complicate the politics analogy just a smidge, I think. Yeah. Yeah. To say this, it's all pro wrestling. And then just it's become a way to sort of hand wave it away. You know, I mean, if you, if you're going to call it pro wrestling, at least like engage with the, well, what that means.

This is from Chad Orzel, David. They used to be novel, but it seems like every single retrospective story is an oral history now. What's the next article format that seems fresh now, but will be massively overworked five years from now? Can we talk a little bit about oral history creep in American life? Can I just interject right now to sing the praises of Alan Siegel's Terminator 2 oral history that ran on the ringer.com this week? I was going to mention that. And I'm going to use that as an example, as an example of how to do an oral history. So Alan Siegel does this great piece about Terminator 2.

and he has Arnold Schwarzenegger and he has James Cameron. Okay. Great. Okay. Now you may do an oral history of Terminator 2. If you don't have the principles or at least some of the principles, you probably should just write a different kind of piece. Mm-hmm. The subject isn't ruled out.

I just remember a few years ago, there was an oral history of the 90s Chicago Bulls, one of the seasons. and it didn't have Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen, or Phil Jackson. And I'm just like at that point, write the awesome piece, call people for, you know, interviews and quotes and all that stuff, but it just shouldn't be an oral history. It's just, can you just do first person like, like I am Bill Winnington and this is what I experience? Is that what you'd want to read? Yeah. I mean, it's just like one of these things where, and I get, I'm not trying to say everything

should be access journalism because I don't think that. I just think there are so many times when people are locked into that format and really another piece would be better that just tells me what happened. Okay, so there's a couple of things. Stop me if you disagree. If you have the access, the pros of doing the oral history are one, if you do have access to everybody that matters that you just need to get out of the way, right? I mean, if you have a lot of good interviews with people that, you know, with all the major players and people want to hear from them, then the last thing that, you know, the reading public needs is like you pontificating as the sort of the narrator for a paragraph before every good quote, right? This is just, it's just the, just the meat, you know? And the other thing is there's definitely like a flag planting aspect of this, right?

Because even if you had, you know, even if maybe you didn't have everybody and you're going to do the oral history of, you know, honey, I shrunk the kids, you could. couldn't get Rick Moranis, maybe so called the oral history of hunting I Shrunk the Kids to sort of win the SEO battle and sort of stave off other people from trying to one up you, you know? Yes, because it seems definitive. Yeah. That's what it is, right? You're lying down the marker that says, I have written the definitive piece about so-and-so.

Mm-hmm. And you can't come out and say that in a headline, but you can come out and say, I've written the oral history of so-and-so. I have written oral histories. I am pro-oral history. I think they work best when there are lots of different viewpoints to a story. And it really benefits. So if you had like if again, if there was a if there was a basketball team you could imagine or remember Jonathan Abrams,

great one about the Malice in the Palace back at Granlin where you have like there are multiple different viewpoints and stories to be told and they all kind of locked together. That's great. The ESPN oral history. S&L, you know, those books because there's so many people. and the cast and there's writers and there's celebrities that came on the show and all these things that it really benefits having that. But there are some cases when I just want the writer to take me by the lapels and say, I'm going to tell you what happened. I'm going to tell you everything that happened here and show you the through line rather than just throwing all these quotes at you.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that we want that. I mean, that's why we read what people write, right? We want We want good writers to tell us stories, you know? You want, and I think there's, you know, definitely instances where people, like I said, was saying before, need to get out of their own way, right? I mean, like every, every feature story that you write doesn't need to feel like a, you know, a freshman year composition thing where you have to, like, write three sentences to earn a quote or something. But if you make those sentences worthwhile, that's sort of the point, right?

I mean, you tell us the story and the quotes can be, the quotes can be. the quotes, you know, are color, or they, they're part of the story. I agree. There's a, there's, you know,

as many as, there may be too many oral histories, but oral history is, in the writing world are just sort of like the documentaries of, you know, the streaming era, right? Where it's like,

at some point, I mean, there's a lot of great documentaries out there, and it's usually the ones we end up talking about on the show or that, you know, they become part of the monoculture, but there's even more terrible documentaries,

right? And it's like, I always, we joke that like, there's, like, so many documentaries, documentaries should just be like,

open source by law, right? Because if somebody does, I think I've probably said that on this show, because if somebody like does a crappy, a crappy documentary about, you know, exile on Main Street or something, like the Rolling Stones probably aren't going to sit for a better version of the, of the same documentary, right? I mean, they're not going to, like, they're not going to come back five times until a director really, like, wins an Oscar for his exile on Main Street documentary. So, you know, let those, let whatever interviews you got be there for the, you know, people to do it better down the road. But of course you're not going to do that because there's all this like you want to be definitive. You want to be planting your flag. You want to be the documentary to go watch

about this single subject, even if it's secretly not very good. You know what was a good idea for a moral history not long ago? Somebody did a biography of Robert Altman. Robert Altman, whose movies have casts of thousands famously like 30 actors in the credits. And it was so cool because it was actually like a Robert Altman movie where you hear the overlapping voices on the soundtrack and all that stuff like that that to me was such a smart idea like that was like this this subject absolutely deserves the oral history treatment maybe more than the straight biographical treatment yeah that's a great idea also david all oral histories except for alan seagulls and all the other people we like they're all too long they're all too long you interview it's it's the writer's dilemma you do all this research

and then you want to show everybody that you did all this research. So you won't cut any of it. You won't, you won't slim it down into a story. It, trust me, it's worse. And I've been, I have, I have, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, to mention the televangelist. I, I know, I know what I speak. And you then just make the oral history too long. When you're not, when you're not, you know, constrained by some sort of artificial word limit,

or by just like the sort of narrative arc that any, feature story builds for itself when it's when it is just a list of primary sources with some like minor introductions or whatever then yeah it it does seem it does seem like being exhaustive make i mean being exhaustive makes a lot more sense yeah exhausting that's that's i guess that's the fear yeah oh absolutely you don't so you don't cut and by the way this is another thing as long as we're giving advice here needs to have a through line needs to have a storyline which you just mentioned like it's not this is not just like Wikipedia in quote form it must have a storyline that I can follow through chapter headings that take me from one place to another that's a good thing in

an oral history and the second one is and I think people forget this it should have a rhythm like a written piece of writing yep like you know in a piece of writing not every sentence you write is the same length you write a short sentence you write a long sentence you write a short sentence You know, you vary it up. You make it punchy so that the real. Oral history should read like that. And so many of the ones I read, every quote is like the same length and it's all like a long paragraph. And after I've read like nine long paragraph quotes, I'm like, I'm out.

I'm bored. I'm exhausted. Enough of that. All right. David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. Big news this week, thanks to a procedural mistake, not, you know, his actual innocence, Bill Cosby has been released from prison

where he had served three years for sexual assault. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. No, no, we said free Brittany, not free Bill Cosby. thanks to Alex Papadap and Fartagnan for that one. Always nice to hear from Fartagnan. You saw the Felicia Rashad stuff too. Oh, yeah. Came out on Twitter and Justice has done. There were a lot of buy Felicia tweets too.

That was kind of a subgenre of the whole Bill Cosby reaction. Elsewhere, David, someone named Lily Lauren tweeted out a picture of a paper invitation she got for a fancy party. and is often the case with such invites you had to check what you want to eat at the fancy dinner. There was beef, pork, or, and this was the next box to check, child 12 or under. You guess it meant like a children's meal, but it seemed like your choices were beef, pork, or child 12 were under. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, is this child locally raised and organic? Thanks to the laundry to that. I noticed the New York Times

as Pete Wells got in on that one. And finally, David, Donald Trump has launched a new social media platform. It's called Getter. G-E-T-T-R. Yeah. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write getter-colon done.

And when the social media platform collapses, it was also an overword Twitter joke to say that we could remove the colon and just say, get her done. Exactly. Exactly. Thanks to Scott Tobias, Rob Pollard and Marissa. If you, like David and I, have memorized the words of the blue collar comedy tour special, congrats.

You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. All right, a few weeks ago, David, Janet Malcolm died, and we talked about the mandatory books that appeared on the bookshelves of every single one of our writer friends. Yes. We walked in their apartment for a party. You would look around. You would see the books. I understand you have been working toward a complete list of the mandatory books on a young writer's bookshelf.

No, I mean, working is probably giving me too much credit. And complete is definitely incorrect. But I just started jotting down some titles. Okay. I started my list in the back of the napkin. You tell me what you. It's funny because I started looking through when there was a lot of books that like, that I realize that like I don't even know.

know, I didn't even know what they were about so much. Like, I definitely hadn't engaged with them at all, but I'd, I probably hand sold them in a bookstore, you know, pretending I knew about it. We pretended we'd read them at least once. I'm trying to think, like, what's a good example of a book that sort of only exists, that exists more by spine on your friend's shelf than in real life? Like, how about, like, no logo by Naomi Klein? Like, that is.

Like, perfect. That book, like, that is a spine. And, I mean, it's a, I'm sure it's a fantastic book. The reviews are incredible. I cannot say I've read it. lefty friends, which is to say our friends. Well, okay, speaking of lefty friends, in those days, and this is probably less to do with political alignment and more to do with goodwill hunting, but Howard Zenz's

people history of the United States, I think, was on every single bookshelf of every house that you would go into. Notting. Trying to think of some other ones. Okay, here's what else have in my list. Nickel and dined, also, I guess, like, political, you know? Big time. We talked about sex drugs and cocoa puffs.

When we first started this conversation, that book was, I mean, listen, Closerman's amazing. And I think the title of the book is a little bit, maybe a little bit off-putting if you're not deeply familiar with him. But that was the, I mean, he was the like the John Jeremiah Sullivan of the day. Like, everybody had that book, you know? I mean, it was fantastic. I think that sells him short, but okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just mean, like, it was just like a, it was like an epic nonfiction book, right?

Yes. A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again speaking. I mean, that's, you know. 100% of bookshelves, yes. Probably more prevalent than infinite jest, even. I would say certainly that was on like 98% of bookshould. Yeah,

but even, I mean, we're just speaking to nonfiction here, but, but a supposedly funny thing was just everywhere. Okay.

What else? Stephen King's on writing. I mean, we were traveling in literary circles, but that was, how many times did you walk into someone's house and they're just like, you know,

it's better than you think. It's going to be, it's like, yes, of course it is, David King's a fantastic right. Yeah. The year of magical thinking.

That was, that was, I mean, that was, I think, everywhere. And then you can go back in time. you know, it's not all exactly in the 2000 stuff.

There's obviously some older stuff like the Kool-Aid acid test, you know. I mean, there's a lot of like, we talked about, you know, some of Tom Wolfe or whatever. I mean, but there's, it's funny because I was looking through, I started looking through a list of like the most influential nonfiction books, you know, of whatever. And one of the ones that you see on every list is how to win friends and influence people, you know, the Dale Carnegie Classic or whatever. But weirdly it was like the takeoff book, the how to lose friends and alienate people.

Was it Toby Young? wrote that. Yeah, that was on like every single bookshelf in that era, right? Like everybody had a copy of that book. No, my book. I don't know. Do you have any other ones that you were thinking of? Maybe just our circle of friends, but Bob Caro was really big. Yes. Yeah. I mean, really big, yeah, no pun intended. Yeah, I mean, talking about real estate, those books suck up a lot of. And it would often be the boast, kind of like the Stephen King,

when you mention where it's like, you know what, it actually is really, really good. People showing you that they're actually reading the LBJ books. Yeah, we had friends that had a LBJ book club for a while. I mean, Kara, Book Club. If that was the big book right now, because you like, it's, okay, so Stephen King is obviously incredibly prolific. But so it's a natural thing if you're a Stephen King fan. And I know there's podcasts and everything else.

It'd be like, let's rank all the Stephen King books. Did Gilbert Cruz already do that? I think he might have. But you rank you rank all the Stephen King books. from whatever, one million to one, right? What is the Robert Caro? Can you rank, can you rank LBJ like chapters from like 200 to one? Or like do you, like, how can we, how would the modern culture try to digest the power

broker, all those like LBJ, the whole LBJ series? I feel that is sitting in the Vulture CMS just waiting for the new KROLBJ volume. I remember our friend Chris Solentrop did that with Bob Woodward books. Oh, he did? He ranked all of them when Rage came out or whatever the last Woodward book was. So that was a really, yeah, that was a really cool exercise. No, I think so. By the way, can we just as long as since you and I are such book snobs?

And by that we mean collecting books, not actually reading books like David and I'm pretty sure I've never read the Power Broker. I'm going to speak for you here, David, or at least read The Power Broker in its entirety. There were some many levels here because you would go into a book, a friend's book shelf and you could see whether they had had the paperback of some of these older books or whether they had actually acquired the first edition of some of these nonfiction books like you and I had. They had the hardcover. That was a big deal. Did you just go buy that at Barnes & Noble yesterday? Or have you been shopping around like we have? Yeah. And if you're in the literary community,

there's two, there's further levels to this, right? There's not just a hardcover, but there's a hardcover with the press release in it so that you definitely, you got it. And then, and then once step further from that is you just have the galley of the book, right? And even if that means... I read this in galleys. Even if that means you had to go to the basement of the strand and purchase the galley to, you know, I mean, you didn't question it. Like, the level of dedication that that took, I think, was sufficient to give you your

nonfiction bona fides. By the way, David and I are talking about this in the past tense, but come visit either of our houses right now. And you'll find that this is still how David and I's bookshelves look. This is ongoing for now. So we're not done with book collecting snobbery. David, speaking of books, listener Matt Unmock, to hope I'm saying your name right, Mac, points us to a new New York Times story by Katie Rogers about the flood of Donald Trump

books on the horizon. We have touched on the subject before, but there is an amazing paragraph in here about just the New York Times writers working on Trump books at the moment. let me read this to you. Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent of the New York Times, is working on a definitive history of the Trump presidency with his wife, Susan Glasser, of the New Yorker. Maggie Haberman is also working on a book about Mr. Trump. Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, National Political Correspondents are writing a book on the presidential race between Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden. Jeremy Peters, who covers a Republican Party for the Times, is working on a book that assesses the GOP's attempts to wrangle Mr. Trump.

Mark Leibovic. guest on this show, a political correspondent for the Times is working on a sequel to this town, a book on Washington culture that will touch on the Trump era. So one, two, three, four, five, six New York Times writers at this moment that we know of are working on books about Donald Trump. Mm-hmm. Not surprising, but still pretty striking. Well, we talked about it before Trump even left office.

And I, you know, we touched on a little bit recently. We're talking about the lack of Biden books. I think for probably the rest of our lives, Trump books are going to sell better than, well, I hope. In some ways, I kind of hope. Trump is a subject will sell better than whoever the current alternative is. And even if that's diminishing returns, the returns are still greater than, you know,

whatever your Biden angle would be. Yeah. Yeah. Then Joe, the first two years, is not going to sell us. as well. A couple more, and then we'll get to some only in journalism words. From Jake Tuber, had Brian and David been college athletes, you saw college athletes got the right now to sell their name and likeness and make money in ways they never had before, what brands would have paid for use of their image likeness?

What does that even mean? Like, what do you, like, if we have been... Like, who could we have gotten the endorsement deal with? Or who would we have wanted to get the endorsement deal with? Oh, well, I mean, just our naming, like, Max and barbecue restaurants in the state of Texas. Yeah. Neinfos. Yeah, exactly. We both have big meanfiz bibs on, you know, and we're holding a margaritas.

That would be fantastic. Food is where I immediately go. What do you think? Yeah. I think that's basically what I cared about in my college years and early 20s was like football, which is kind of off the table here and then eating, eating massive quantities of food. Yeah. I mean, could we accept money to, you know, sit.

ring side when WWF comes to town or is that, do you just have to take the seats and so walk away? I don't know. I don't know how the new rules are going to work. I mean, the endorsements are going to be great. It's going to be an arms race to see who has the most entertaining YouTube channels and stuff now. And that's going to be fun to watch. But that seems like, you know, something that would have been really fun to do too. Should that conspicuous use of the term arms race bring us to our only in journalism words list of the day?

Yes, please. If you have not followed along with us, David and I like to point out words that you, you see used in articles, but never in actual human speech. We've gotten so many nominees. We now have to go back and write all these down because, dude, there are so many. And I probably get 30 to 40 a week easily, of which I've just taken the ones I've remembered to write down. So here are a few more.

Only in journalism words, entrenched. Oh, I think you could use that. I think I probably have used that in real life some. But yes, it's a mostly in journalism word for sure. But if you're using it, if you're using it and you're imitating a journalist, like you read that and now it has wormed its way into your speech. I don't, I think that counts as an only in journalism word. Mm-hmm.

Here's some more uptick. Uptus. Zero chance anybody talks like that. Fair. F-A-R-E, Scott Porch writes, as used to describe a content provider, retailer, or restaurant stuff. Yes. Fair.

Seismic shift. Yes. That's kind of like arms race. Always good for your journalism, for your, article. Riven, as somebody suggests. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And then I like this from Brad Dorfman. He says, this isn't a single word, but does anyone other than a journalist refer to the paper of record? Does this even exist anymore? I just saw the Chicago Tribune referred to it as the paper of record for Chicago by a journalist,

of course. But like most local papers, it has been so decimated. I'm not sure it carries that weight anymore. Hashtag I think that's right. Yeah, I definitely co-assigned that. I mean, I don't even know, I don't even know the paper of record as I've ever used it has really any meaning. I mean, I understand the meaning of the words, but usually you just mean it as like a nickname for the New York Times, right? I mean, it's like, it's actually a very paper of record. It's actually a very journalism thing to add to to to, to need three ways to refer to any one thing, right?

Because you can't just say Mr. It's boring to say Curtis, Mr. Curtis over and over again when writing a piece about you. So you got to have a nickname, you got to be able to use the first name and the last name interchangeably. Sort of a journalism tick about journalism. And when you're writing something mean about the New York Times, especially how they miss something, the supposed paper of record, the Times, comma, which bills itself as the paper

of record, comma, or the Times, comma, which boasts of all the news that's fit to print, comma, and then you just take a sledgehammer and get angry at the Times and knock it around a little bit. Yeah, you don't even, it actually doesn't even need to take on the notion of it being the paper of record. If you just said the New York Times or like put like in quotes, the so-called gray lady, like you don't, as long as you just say so-called in quotes, you can, anything can follow that and you've just taken the sledgehammer out. A lot of color photographs I see right there on the front page calling yourself the gray lady. Finally, David Argett. Oh, yeah. Have we already done Argett?

Argett. Well, let me tell you what happened. And Argett was suggested by Spencer Kite, who points out that we both used it on the last podcast. Yes. I remember that. I thought when you used it, you were like making fun of me using it. But yeah, that's definitely. You started it.

You used Argett, which I told you never to use when we're on the podcast, just when it's just the two of us talking on the phone or something. You put it out there and then I think I follow up. Anyway, thank you, Spencer. Yes, Argett is an only in journalism word, no matter what David and I say. say you're on the press box. All right, it's time for David. Shoemaker. Guess is the strained pun headline.

Yeah. Monday's headline about a number of shaker objects being transferred to a new museum was the shakers are movers. Mm-hmm. Today's headline comes from Dan Hauptman Esquire. It's from CNN.com. It's very newsy, David, because it involves the busy travel weekend America is facing for July 4th.

We all think the coronavirus is over, David, so we, We are climbing into our vehicles this weekend, as you are. And I want you to think of in 1980s John Candy movie as your inspiration here. What was CNN.com strain pun headline? He wasn't. Was he in planes, trains, and automobiles? I always forget which buddy comedies he was in. So I assume that's where I'm going.

Plains and autoimmune disease. I mean, planes, trains and. That's good. Okay, hold on. Might be the middle word. No, I know. Plains, strains,

planes strains and automobiles. Bang. That's great. That's great. I mean, would say. Love it. Bang.

Love it. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Lonnie, Rinaldo. We are off Monday for July 4th. And I hope, hope that we may have a special

books podcast next week. I haven't even told David about this because it's so tentative. But I hope there's something, I hope there's something coming up. Great. So look for that. Plus David now on Friday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.